The Argensolas

Four Sonnets

translated from the Spanish by

Michael Smith


Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola

Sonnet


October's snatched every leaf
away, and, impudent with downpours,
the Ebro suffers neither bank nor bridge,
and floods the neighbouring fields.

Now, as usual, Moncayo shows
its towering brow crowned with snow,
and in the east we scarcely glimpse the sun
before it's veiled by opaque earth.

The sea and forest feel the rampage
of the North Wind; its howls
confine folk to hut and port.

And Fabio, prostrate on Thais' threshold,
washes it with tears of shame,
the debt he owes to time he's lost.

 

Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola

Sonnet

Brief hours of my contentment,
while I had you it never crossed
my mind, to my grief, in hours
so packed with torment, I'd see you changed.

Gone with the wind the towers I built,
as fleet the wind that held them up;
but I'm to blame for all this ill:
I laid foundations on soft soil.

Love appears in vain display,
reckons all things plain and sure,
only then to disappear.

O great misfortune! O great ill!
For a slight good that never fails
to risk a good that always lasts.


Sonnet


Love, that in my deepest thoughts
holds at the ready his worthy force,
often rises armoured to my eyes
from where I show him to Cynthia's sight.

She at once will check his daring
salient, teach restraint in future;
so she withholds that smile, that grace,
her customary balm of pain.

My sweet mistress takes inward flight
in gentle awe; for there's no thing
can stand the strain of her rebuffs.

Not for what it does to every man
do I evade this bolt, but rather
that it ministers heaven's decree.

 

Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola

Sonnet


First I must confess, Don Juan,
that Doña Elvira's pink and white,
if truly seen, owe to her
no more than what they cost to buy.

But after this I must confess
her false beauty is so great
such beauty in a real face
would only vie with hers in vain.

Yet, why wonder that I am so strayed
by such deceit when, as you know,
nature can deceive us so?

The blue sky that we all see
is neither sky nor blue. The pity
is so much beauty is untrue!

 

Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola (1559-1613), was the older brother of Bartolomé (see below). He was official chronicer of Aragón and Secretary of State for War under the Count of Lemos, Viceroy de Naples. He lived in Naples for a while and died there. An admirer of Horace and Juvenal, his poetry is academic and classicist. His love sonnets never suggest the actual involvement of the poet's own emotions.


Bartolomé Juan Leonardo de Argensola (1561-1631) was an exact contemporary of Góngora (1561) and Lope de Vega (1562), and knew Luis de León. Until 1586 he and his brother Lupercio (see above) were in the service of Fernando of Aragón, Duke of Villahermosa. After the latter's death Bartolomé passed into the service of the Empress María where he remained until 1603. Like his brother he also later went into service in the Neapolitan viceroyalty, and after his brother's death he was given his post of chronicler to the Aragón kingdom. His works were collected after his death and published, together with his brother's works, by his cousin Gabriel Leonardo under the title Rimas de Lupercio y del doctor Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola (Zaragoza 1634).

(Information drawn from biographies in the online anthology, palabravirtual.)

Bartolomé de Argensola

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